This case study encompasses a number of overlapping studies focused on the central role of impact assessment (IA) in the development of offshore energy in Atlantic Canada. Team members include Ian Stewart (University of King’s College) and Gerald Singh (University of Victoria) as co-leads, Mark Stoddart (Memorial University), Leah Fusco (Memorial University Postdoc), Chris Milley (Marine Affairs Program, Dalhousie University), and research assistants Gardenio Pimentel Da Silvo and Lyle Porter (Master’s candidate, Marine Affairs Program, Dalhousie).

1) Assessing blue: a review of recent developments in impact assessment theory and practice for Canada’s marine sector (Stewart, Fusco, da Silvo)

Building on team members’ participation in DFO-led initiatives on Canada’s Blue Economy and other DFO initiatives, this research and associated publication explores the synergies between Canada’s emerging blue economy and IA. As a contribution to IA and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) research, this work has involved a survey of how project-based, strategic, and regional forms are used in coastal and marine spaces. Bibliometric and scoping review methods have been used to cross compare blue economy and SDG literature to find relevant and promising synergies between the field of IA and other cognate–but hitherto largely independent–fields central to blue economy planning. We make recommendations with respect to how IAs under the 2019 Canadian Impact Assessment Act could strengthen Canada’s blue economy aspirations, particularly with a view to plans for major offshore wind development in NS and NL.

2) Infrastructures of Legitimacy (Stewart and Fusco)

Developing from the empirical results of the first project, this more theoretical study takes up the Regional Assessment of Offshore Oil and Gas Exploratory Drilling East Newfoundland and Labrador. Completed in February 2020, this assessment was immediately contested in court for its subsequent ministerial regulations lifting (under conditions) the requirement that oil exploration drilling projects complete an IA. We look at the details of this case in order to situate it within the context of both international practices for this type of assessment and as Canada’s first regional assessment under the  new Impact Assessment Act (2019). We also explore this case by drawing on recent social science and humanities literature on infrastructures. We use the notion of infrastructures of legitimation by attending to how challenges to the physical infrastructural aspects of oil and gas developments are co-opted, contained, and neutralized through IA processes. As such, IAs will play an increasingly important role as infrastructures of legitimacy for blue economy strategies in Canada.  

3) What we do not hear: fish harvesters, IA, and seismic surveys (Fusco, Stewart, Singh, Stoddart, Milley, Porter)

Seismic surveying (2D and 3D), involving sharp blasts of subsurface air pulses (ranging from a few 100 to a few 1000 Hz, depending on the technology), is an integral aspect of exploration and development of offshore oil and gas. Although absent from consideration in Newfoundland’s regional assessment for offshore exploration drilling, seismic surveys do require project-based assessments and have long been an issue of concern among those using the oceans, specifically the fishing industry. But what do we know of the actual lived experiences from those who harvest the seas? And have these voices been heard within the various layers of IA that have criss-crossed the discursive spaces of stakeholder engagement during the multiple decades of survey vessels that have criss-crossed the harvesting grounds off Eaststern Newfoundland? This project offers a review and discussion of how fish harvester experience has been captured, or missed, by impact assessment reports in the region over the last few decades. As a parallel project, we are also working toward a survey that will capture fish harvesters’ experiences with seismic exploration activity in the ocean. This will contribute to ongoing discussions about managing the impacts of seismic surveys as well as IA methods more broadly.